HR WITHOUT PEOPLE?

The Future of Work

The future of work is a vital contemporary area of debateboth in business and management research, and in widersocial, political and economic discourse. Globally relevantissues, including the ageing workforce, rise of the gig econ-omy, workplace automation and changing forms of businessownership, are all regularly the subject of discussion in bothacademic research and the mainstream media, having widerprofessional and public policy implications.

The Future of Work series features books examining keyissues or challenges in the modern workplace, synthesisingprior developments in critical thinking, alongside currentpractical challenges in order to interrogate possible futuredevelopments in the world of work.

Offering future research agendas and suggesting practicaloutcomes for today’s and tomorrow’s businesses and work-force, the books in this series present powerful, challengingand polemical analysis of a diverse range of subjects in theirpotential to address future challenges and possible newtrajectories.

The series highlights what changes still need to be made tocore areas of business practice and theory in order for them tobe forward facing, more representative and able to fulfill theindustrial challenges of the future.

OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES

Careers: Thinking, Strategising and Prototyping

Ann M. Brewer

Algorithms, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Implications forthe Future of the Workplace

Gavin Brown and Richard Whittle

FORTHCOMING TITLES

The Healthy Workforce: Enhancing Wellbeing and Produc-tivity in the Workers of the Future

Stephen Bevan and Cary L. Cooper

Spending Without Thinking: The Future of Consumption

Richard Whittle

The Future of Recruitment: Using the new science of talentanalytics to get your hiring right

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Franziska Leutner and ReeceAkhtar

Cooperatives at Work

George Cheney, Matt Noyes and Emi Do

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HR WITHOUT PEOPLE?

Indust r ial Evolut ion in theAge of Automation, AI, and

Machine Learning

BY

ANTHONY R. WHEELERWidener University, USA

And

M. RONALD BUCKLEYUniversity of Oklahoma, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – IndiaMalaysia – China

Emerald Publishing LimitedHoward House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Anthony R. Wheeler and M. Ronald BuckleyPublished under exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions serviceContact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior writtenpermission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copyingissued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA byThe Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chaptersare those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure thequality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representationimplied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application anddisclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80117-040-6 (Print)ISBN: 978-1-80117-037-6 (Online)ISBN: 978-1-80117-039-0 (Epub)

To my co-author, who has made a greaterimpact on my life than any other mentor

- Anthony R. Wheeler

To Marsha, Kathleen, and Christopher- M. Ronald Buckley

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CONTENTS

About the Authors xi

Preface xiii

1. The Evolution of Humans and Their Work 12. The Importance of Work to Societies 153. The Current and Future States of Automation,

Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning 294. The Current State of HRM with Automation,

Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning 455. Near-term Human Resources Challenges in the

Age of Automation, Artificial Intelligence, andMachine Learning 69

6. The Next Generation 857. A Century of Stress Headed Into the Next Century 1018. Serving Multiple Segments of the Population 1159. The Uneven Spread of the Fourth Industrial

Revolution 13110. A Technology-Enabled Future Renaissance? 147

Notes 165

Index 177

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Anthony R. Wheeler is the Dean of the School of BusinessAdministration and a Professor of Management at WidenerUniversity. His research focuses on employee turnover andretention, employee stress, burnout, engagement, and leader-ship. He has published in Journal of Management, Journal ofApplied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior,Journal of Business Research, Work & Stress, LeadershipQuarterly, Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology,International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Journal ofBusiness Ethics, and Journal of Business Logistics. He is aco-editor of Research in Personnel and Human ResourcesManagement and has consulted for Fortune 500 companies,start-ups, and governments.

M. Ronald Buckley holds the JC Penney Company Chair ofBusiness Leadership and is a Professor of Management and aProfessor of Psychology in the Michael F. Price College ofBusiness at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his PhD inI-O Psychology from Auburn University. He is interested inmany topics in Human Resources Management, e.g.,interview decision-making, fairness and bias in selection, andorganizational socialization. Buckley has written over 160peer-reviewed articles, many of which have appeared in theJournal of Management, Academy of Management Review,

xi

Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology,Educational and Psychological Measurement, LeadershipQuarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human DecisionProcesses, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

xi i About the Authors

PREFACE

Depending on the movie or book, the natural end point ofartificial intelligence and machine learning is either thedestruction of humankind at the hands of the machines or thegeneral atrophy of the human body, mind, and spirit such thatour bleary-eyed existence will be reduced to machine-assistedmovement and a technology-enabled continuous stream ofaudio-visual entertainment to keep our brains occupied duringwaking hours. With the Internet of Things (IoT) linking everydevice, appliance, and machine, perhaps one day a self-awarenetwork of appliances will conspire to rid their world ofhuman threats while we do our laundry or reach for a coldbeverage in our refrigerator – a scene ripped from TheTerminator itself. Perhaps one day, humans will lounge all dayin motorized personal chairs that carry us from our beds tobreakfast to morning movie time to lunch and so forth suchthat we evolve into pure id biological masses that no longerresemble our now-distant Homo sapiens relatives – somethingthe Disney-Pixar film WALL-E portrays. Or perhaps humansadapt and evolve to use technological advances to spur a newage of Renaissance where our creativity leads to breathtakingadvancements in art, music, and literature that makes us morehuman than we have ever been.

Getting from where automation, artificial intelligence, andmachine learning currently exists to whatever future might

xi i i

exist for humans and machines will not be a simple straight-line narrative. How humans and machines evolve will changenearly every facet of human existence, including how wework – and the meaning of that work – and how workinfluences almost every organizing structure in the worldtoday – companies, industries, government, societies. Thatspan of organizing structures through the lens of humanresources management is the purpose of this book. That is,automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning willchange how humans think about the role of work in their livesand how organizations – the force driving automation, arti-ficial intelligence, and machine learning – will use their humanresources management systems to influence the meaning ofwork, the role of jobs, and the sense of belonging that allhumans derive from their work. This is the seminal reciprocalrelationship between humans and work.

Yet these trends are not new. Societies became aware ofautomation during and in the aftermath of War Wars 1 and 2.During the 1980s, car manufacturers began to embrace theuse of machines to automate portions of vehicle production.An IBM machine – dubbed Deep Blue – famously defeatedworld chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, signaling anadvancement in artificial intelligence. At the turn of thetwenty-first century, many economically advanced nationshad entered into the Knowledge Economy where generatingideas and services created significantly more economic valuethan did making things. Terms like “human capital” emergedamid the Knowledge Economy, meaning that companiescould leverage the cumulative knowledge, skills, and abilitiesof their employees to create, nurture, and sustain competitiveadvantages in their markets. In the Knowledge Economy,people mattered. Companies quickly realized that the oldstereotype of human resources management as a back office,pushing papers, and only adding to a company’s overhead

xiv Preface

costs did not mesh with a globally competitive businessenvironment. As outsourcing to lower labor cost countriesbecame more expensive and was paired with advances inrobotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, humancapital disruption in labor markets – people – became ines-capable. This is the inevitable result of the Knowledge Econ-omy ceding to the reality of what some have called the“Fourth Industrial Revolution” – one that is based on auto-mation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Meanwhile, secondary, vocational or technical, and highereducation have tried to keep pace with preparing students toenter a workforce that looks remarkably different from theworkforce that their parents entered. Science, technology,engineering, and math – STEM – programs at the secondary/high school level have sprouted up all over the world, teachingchildren at younger ages new technological advances andapplications. Vocational or technical training programs haveheavily focused on computer and technology-based courses.Automotive mechanics work as much now with computerterminals as they do with wrenches. In higher education,“analytics” now pervades general education requirements atcolleges and universities. Formerly art-based majors likegraphic design now minor or double-major in marketing.Accounting programs regularly include analytics coursesinstead of additional tax or auditing courses.

In the United States alone, college and universities enrollover 250,000 accounting majors per year and graduate justunder 80,000 students per year with bachelor and masterdegrees. This supply of students feeds 42,000 accountingfirms, who combined employ 1.3 million accountants. Anadditional 300,00 certified public accountants (CPAs) workinside of corporations as opposed to public accounting firms.These figures do not include people in the workforce who donot hold CPAs or even accounting degrees but work inaccounting-related jobs like bookkeepers, payroll clerks,

Preface xv

corporate financial analysts, staff accountants, or accountantsworking with non-profits or all levels of government. Thebroadest estimate in the United States of the number of peopleworking within the field of accounting nears 11 millionpeople.1 Globally, that number soars by multiple factors.

Over the past decade, accounting firms across the globehave invested billions of dollars into automation, artificialintelligence, and machine learning technologies. While firmsmight have in the past outsourced entry-level tasks to low-costoverseas partners, the economics of outsourcing increasinglyyield smaller cost savings when compared to what analgorithm or bot can accomplish with greater volume.Outsourcing labor still provides cost-competitive advantagesin some industries, but in the accounting industry, it appearsthat outsourcing does not provide the same advantages.Advances in data analytics, computing power and data stor-age, and analytic technical skills of talented data scientistshave created disruption in the field of accounting.

Over the next 20 years, 40% of basic accounting jobs willbe automated. Technologies like blockchain, which automat-ically leaves an audit trail, change how auditing functionswithin firms and companies will operate. On the audit side,estimates suggest that fewer than 100 firms in the UnitedStates will be needed to handle all of the auditing workthat is now done by thousands of firms.2 Add in that manycompanies – some estimates suggest over 30%3 – plan tooutsource their financial functions, which includes mostlyentry-level accounting job duties, within their units, and thefield of accounting looks likely to significantly contract overthe coming decades. At the macro level, this means that mil-lions of accounting jobs within the US workforce will bedisplaced over a relatively short period of time. A classicsupply and demand mismatch warily looms on the horizon.Institutions of higher education produce thousands of

xvi Preface

graduates that head out into an industry known for highpaying jobs and long careers as that industry morphs into asmaller, more analytic, more technologically driven industry.The accounting industry will be alive and financially well inthe Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it will likely not employnearly as many people as it now does.

These effects, of course, are not limited to the accountingindustry. Artificial automation, intelligence, and machinelearning will impact numerous industries. Across the entire USworkforce, for instance, up to 73 million jobs – a full third ofthe US workforce – could be displaced by automation, artifi-cial intelligence, and machine learning in the next 10 years.4

Unlike previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth IndustrialRevolutionmight not create new industries and jobs to replacethose who are displaced. The question that this book tries toanswer, in everyday business and not academic terms, is, howwill the business field of human resources management – thepeople function – respond to these paradigm shifting changesand potential realities? We start by examining the importanceof work for humans and societies that artificial intelligence,machine learning, and automation actively gainsay. We thenexplore how human resources management functions withinbusinesses will adapt in the near-, mid-, and long term.Finally, we peer into a future of smaller full-time workforceswhere human resources management can be leveraged topotentially usher in a new Renaissance and what that mightmean for people and societies. Obviously, no one can predictthe future with exact certitude, but patterns and trends can beextrapolated. So, what happens to human resources man-agement when there are no or fewer jobs? Let us start with thebeginning and hopefully begin a discussion.

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1

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANSAND THEIR WORK

Take a moment to think about who you are as a person.After saying your name, how do you describe yourselfto others upon first introduction? Do you begin yourdescription with a set of nouns that convey a set of rela-tionships – are you a mother or father? Do you begin yourdescription with a location – where are you from? Do youbegin your description with words about belonging togroups, teams, or organizations – are you with these people;do you work for this company? Or do you often introduceyourself based upon what you do for work – are you ahuman resources management professional? Obviously,situations dictate to a certain extent how you will initiallydescribe yourself, but chances are that you will refer to yourwork or for whom and with who you work when describingwho you are as a person. Whether you like your work oryour employer very much or not, your work is fundamentalto who you are as a person. Our work not only gives usa sense of self and expression but also provides uswith opportunities – opportunities to move, opportunities

1

to provide, opportunities for fulfillment, opportunities ofrelationships and love, opportunities of freedom. Or workcan, similarly, restrict all of those opportunities.

Some might argue that work provides nothing more than ameans to an end. With work comes money or remuneration.With money comes the ability to purchase goods or servicesthat sustain life, such as food, shelter, and safety. With moneycomes the ability to live a life of status or esteem. That is, someargue that the money earned through work can satisfy bothour needs and wants. However, work – one’s own work – canbe dissociated from money. Consider that some people neverwork a day in their lives for need of money because they havewealth from previous generations. Yet even those who haveinherited wealth often choose to work or assume a vocation –

derived from Latin to mean “a calling” – to not just occupytheir time but also to find some sort of meaning in their lives.

Moreover, money itself holds differential meaning forpeople and even societies.1 Before the advent of money, peopleengaged in barter – an exchange between goods or servicesthat required a time-consuming and sometimes messy processof establishing comparative worth between exchanged goodsor services – that rendered money largely irrelevant in mostsocieties. Money, however, and the meaning ascribed to is stillrelative. In more individualistic societies, money increases thefocus on personal goal attainment while money erodescommunal behaviors in more collectivist societies. Simplystated, money disrupts cohesion and harmony between, with,and among people. People also vary in their attitudes towardmoney and the value they ascribe to money in terms ofwhether or not money is needed to live one’s life the way onechooses to live that life. Inside of organizations, money is aknown disruptor due to perceptions of equity or fairness interms of how the organization distributes money in exchangefor work. An employee can find perfect contentment in his or

2 HR without People?

her salary, which satisfies both that person’s wants and needs.Yet when that employee learns that a coworker earns moremoney – for doing the same job or another job altogether –

that employee will suddenly feel dissatisfaction with theemployer, become frustrated with how the employer treatsemployees, and likely begin looking for a new job in anothercompany. The simple knowledge that a coworker earns moremoney can radically alter not only how one views his or heremployer but also how one assesses how much money isnow needed to cover his or her wants and needs. To furtherdemonstrate the relativity of money, try the following exper-iment. In your mind, think about how much money you needto earn to happily live your life. Put an actual figure on thatamount of money. Now ask your friends, family members,and coworkers that same question and ask if they will tell youtheir figures. What you will likely find is that your monetaryfigure will increase upon hearing what others’ monetary needsto live a happy life are.

Not that people naturally talk about their earnings in socialsettings. Typically, the work one does will convey the socialmeaning of affluence or status. More to the point, though,is that people seldom describe themselves in terms of howmuch money they make. Money might provide the means towhatever ends a person wants or needs, but money does notprovide the sense of self or belonging that one’s job provides.

It is important to understand the pairing of “sense of self andbelonging” mentioned above, as it helps to further explain whywork becomes integral to one’s sense of self. Humans by natureand evolution are primarily social animals, something obfus-cated by pop – and quite frankly, junk – psychology that virallyspreads through socialmedia and the Internet. Even an introvert,someone whose natural predisposition is to prefer one-on-oneor small group conversations as opposed to the extrovert’s pre-disposition to prefer large group settings, is a social creature.

The Evolution of Humans and Their Work 3

Humanshaveaprimarymotivation tobelong togroups that theyfeel are attractive and important. Belonging to a personallyattractive group reflects favorably onto the individual. If a personbelongs to an attractive group, it mustmean that the individual isan important or good or attractive individual. This explains whycompanies with high brand identity receive not just more appli-cants for job openings but also significantly better applicants.Working for a highly recognizable company boosts the self-esteem of the employees who work for that company. It sayssomething about who you are as a person to work for such awell-known and esteemed company.

Delving deeper into the psychological power of belongingto groups and how belonging to those groups alters your senseof self, consider what occurs to individuals when the groupsthey belong to come under attack or scrutiny. Let us assumeyou proudly work for a company that you feel is consideredan industry leader. Your LinkedIn and other social mediaprofiles display your work affiliation. You own company-branded apparel that you wear outside of work. Yourcompany is a good company, and you are a good person.Unrelated to your actual job or even division, a public scandalhits your company. Word leaks and spreads quickly throughthe Internet and news media. Instead of reading or hearingabout how great your company is, you now only hear nega-tive things about your company. How do you feel about this?Do you proudly wear your company-branded apparel outsideof work? Do you shy away from discussions about work withfriends and family? You likely feel cognitive dissonance – youare a good person but you work for a scandalous company.You will feel the need to alleviate this dissonance. Will youleave the company? Or will you double-down on your affili-ation with the company? It is still a good company thatemployed people who did wrong, but that does not mean theentire company is bad. It does not mean you are bad.

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This type of process plays out every day in almost everyfacet of one’s life. This social identity process explains whygroups of people have fought wars against each other for rea-sons that in hindsight appear trivial. Yet, when one’s group isattacked – even verbally – it feels as though you as an indi-vidual are attacked. In defending your group’s honor, status, orphysical well-being, you are in fact defending your honor,status, and well-being. The levels of this social identity processcan scale from a small unit of a group or team to a company toan industry or profession to a society. We see this social identityprocess play out in rivalries between sports teams, which canlead to physical violence among followers. We see this socialidentity process play out in labor relations settings. We see thissocial identity process play out in national politics, as politicalpolarization continues to spread across the globe.

In terms of work, humans often identify with what theydo for work, with companies and industries to which theybelong, and with the professions to which they belong. Itstarts with what we do and scales to larger groups as societiesscale in complexity. Consider surnames that provide heredi-tary links to previous generations. The English surnameWright derives from wood working. The surname Fletcherderives from the French word for arrows used by archers. TheItalian surname Bagni derives from someone who workedas a bathhouse attendant. The Spanish surname Cervantesderives from those who worked as servants. The Greek sur-name Bakirtzis derives from coppersmiths. The German sur-name Farber denotes someone who worked as a dyer. TheChinese surname Zhang is believed to have derived frombowmakers. All of these examples demonstrate how powerfulthe connection is between work and an individual’s identity.It is so strong that for some people, their work is their name.Your family may have been one that constructed wheels(Wheeler) or were primarily herdsmen (Buckley).

The Evolution of Humans and Their Work 5

Identifying people based on they work they do or theprofession they belong to dates to the Middle Ages. Duringthis feudal time period before the age of enlightenment, workwas largely based around serving the needs, wants, andoperation of a local royal’s kingdom or principality. Thelocal royal owned the lands, resources, and means of pro-duction of all people living in that kingdom or principality. Anarray of skilled trade jobs and professions proliferated infeudal economic systems: multiple types of smiths workingwith different metals to produce products or military arma-ment, tanners and cobblers working with animal hides toproduce garments and shoes, masons and carpenters workingwith materials to build structures, millers and bakers takingfarmed grains and creating bread, and falconers and groomsworking with animals. What one did for his or her work onbehalf of the royalty was passed down from generation togeneration, often through heredity and an apprenticeshipvocational training system, and guilds to protect and overseetrades. If your father farmed the land to provide food forthe royal’s kingdom or principality, his surname – perhapsFarmer – would denote that occupation. The farmer’soffspring inherited that surname and likely worked the landfor generations to come. As the Enlightenment, Renaissance,and Industrial Revolution came, the work or profession ofone’s offspring might change, but the surnames continued topass from generation to generation.

During the Middle Ages and clear through the Enlighten-ment, Renaissance, and Industrial Revolution, Western reli-gions reinforced the link between work and one’s self.2

Protestant denominations interpreted parts of the Bible asmeaning that one’s work on Earth could lead to salvation inthe afterlife. The phrase Protestant Work Ethic captures thislinkage between work and one described self, albeit throughthe mechanism of religion. In order to be “saved” by their

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god, one must work hard in his or her daily life. Hard workbecame a way to demonstrate that one is a good person. Workliterally fused to an individual’s identity and salvation to theafterlife.

This leads to the question, though, of the identification ofwork to one’s self being a recent evolutionary outcome. In therecent history – roughly 200,000 years – of human biologicaland social evolution, did humans begin to identify work withtheir sense of self only over the past 1,000 years? Anthropo-logical research points to a longer period of time. The evolu-tionary ancestors of modern humans – Homo erectus – beganorganizing in hunting and gathering groups, likely family-sized units, more than 1.8 million years ago.3 Instead of anomadic lifestyle that followed migratory patterns of foodsources and seasonal weather patterns that affected bothanimals and plants, some hunting and gathering societiesmigrated to areas where resources could be hunted andgathered in a single geographic area. Specialized toolsand hunting and gathering techniques were created to sus-tainably develop and exploit this type of environment Modernhumans – Homo sapiens – specifically evolved as hunters andgatherers and refined the hunting and agriculture techniquesthat allowed for the development of larger, more complexsocieties. However, even in these older human societies, theroles of hunting or fishing and gathering or farming weredivided among people – largely based on biological sex –

within the family units or societies. Men tended to be thehunters, while women tended to be the gatherers. In theseancient family structures and societies, what one did – huntingor gathering – was part of who they were.

We see the multiple factors that embed and reinforce workas central to one’s identity. Evolutionary, social, familial, andreligious forces have shaped the centrality of work tohumans. Several outcomes, of course, occur as a result of the

The Evolution of Humans and Their Work 7

centrality of work to humans and an individual’s identity.This gets to the heart of the meaning of work for anyone.How anyone describes themselves is complex, as any indi-vidual has a complex self. We occupy many roles in our lives.We have myriad interests and hobbies. We maintain dozensof relationships; some close and some distant. Some of theseroles, interests, and relationships are more or less salient tous at any given point in time. Based on circumstances –

perhaps a wedding or a funeral – your role as parent orsibling can become more important or active in how youdescribe yourself. Yet that active role can become lessimportant as circumstances change. Perhaps when sitting inthe stands and cheering as your favorite football team battlesits primary rival in a crosstown derby, your identity as aparent or sibling matters very little at that time. What isimportant to understand about the saliency of roles, inter-ests, and relationships to one’s self is that not only are theseroles, interests, and relationships associated with positivefeelings and emotions, but also that the more roles, interests,and relationships that one identifies with, the more one isopen to having parts of one’s self exposed to potentiallynegative outcomes. That is, the more the things you identifywith, the more those things are open to being threatened orattacked. Recall that humans derive their identities, in part,through groups with which they identify. Those associationsmake us feel good about who we are. If an association isthreatened or attacked by an outsider to that association, theattack is personal as if it happened to us. Now think aboutmultiple roles, interests, and relationships in that regard. Themore we identify with, the more we are exposed to potentialidentity threats.

Fortunately, humans have adapted to cope with thecomplexities of how we self-identify and threats to self-identity. Back to the point of saliency, some roles, interests,

8 HR without People?